Rebels opt to cut their ties with Beale

Stathi Paxinos and Georgina Robinson

The Melbourne Rebels have capped their extraordinary cleanout by cutting ties with Wallabies playmaker Kurtley Beale.

Beale followed incumbent Test No. 10 James O'Connor out the door in the same week head coach Damien Hill was replaced by Wallabies coaching co-ordinator Tony McGahan, and less than three weeks after the club's private owners handed control back to the Victorian Rugby Union.

Foundation Rebels captain Gareth Delve is also leaving, along with players Cooper Vuna, Ged Robinson, Richard Kingi and half-back Nick Phipps, who was poached by the Waratahs. The club is also operating under a new chief executive, Rob Clarke, who took over from Steve Boland earlier this year.

The path has now been cleared for Beale's widely tipped homecoming to the NSW Waratahs after two difficult years with the Rebels.

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Despite talk from players, including likely captain next season, Scott Higginbotham, that the off-contract Beale would be welcomed back to the club next season, Beale's decision to stay in Sydney at the end of the British and Irish Lions three-Test series, rather than join his teammates in Melbourne for the club's final game of the season, put the writing on the wall.

The Rebels remarkably beat the Highlanders 38-37 with a last-ditch try. ''By no means is this all negative but my job and [new coach] Tony McGahan's job is to look to the future and to make decisions in the best interest of the club for the future, and that's what we're doing,'' Clarke said.

Beale has not played for the Rebels since the round-12 game against the Chiefs on May 3, when he was handed his second suspension of the year for alcohol-related issues. It had been widely tipped, even before the infamous tour of South Africa when he and Vuna were sent home for a drunken punch-up, that he would return to the Waratahs next season.

The Rebels last week announced they would jettison O'Connor, whose brash manner had put some teammates offside, and there was a suggestion this could be a way of opening the path for an attempt by the club to retain the talented Beale. But Clarke said that was not the case.

''He's a well-liked individual in the team and in the club, but his personal welfare has to take priority because rugby is only a component of his life. It may be a major one right now but he's got the rest of his life to live and I think he's taking commendable steps in helping himself to make the most of that and we just believe that this is the right decision both for him and the club,'' he said.

Beale has been suspended twice this year by the Australian Rugby Union. The first time came after the Rebels' humiliating club-record 64-7 loss to the Sharks in Durban and again when he broke a condition for his return to the playing field when he drank alcohol the day after the Chiefs game.

He and O'Connor again courted controversy during the Lions series when they were photographed at 4am at a fast-food shop just days before the second Test, missed a bus to a training session in the lead-up to the deciding Test and then were spotted at a Kings Cross nightclub in the early hours of the morning after the Wallabies lost the Sydney Test.

While O'Connor had not publicly caused any off-field problems for the Rebels during his injury-plagued two years at the club, it is believed that his brash and confident nature has alienated some teammates.

Higginbotham last week said O'Connor did not fit the team dynamic in Melbourne.

But Clarke would not go as far as declaring a problem with the Rebels' early recruiting that also saw another erratic star, Danny Cipriani, whose troubled history was known before becoming the club's first signing, cause problems in Melbourne.